


The Make Up

by nerdfighter721



Category: Nothing Much to Do
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 10:37:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3131453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdfighter721/pseuds/nerdfighter721
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Balthazar can’t stand the pain on Pedro’s face any longer, so he takes it upon himself to make his old friend talk to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Make Up

**Author's Note:**

> Title: The Make Up  
> Characters: Balthazar Jones, Pedro Donaldson  
> Prompt: Makeup  
> Word Count: 1,560  
> Rating: K  
> Notes: (I changed the prompt slightly. It’s no longer ‘makeup’ but ‘make up’ that still counts… right?) Balthazar can’t stand the pain on Pedro’s face any longer, so he takes it upon himself to make his old friend talk to him.

**The Make Up**

After everything was said and done at the get together for Hero – after Beatrice explained that Hero wasn’t actually sick – everyone slowly started to disperse. For a while, a lot of people just wanted to hug Hero and talk to her. Pedro hung back. Balthazar noticed that almost right away.

The first group of people started to leave and Balthazar finally took a deep breath and walked up to his old friend.

Since Hero’s birthday, Balthazar hadn't talked to Pedro at all. He only watched him from a distance, watching the pain that Pedro was going through. Usually, he and Claudio gravitated towards each other. Once he found out about Hero, though, he suddenly only held onto himself. He wasn’t seen talking to the usual large groups of people, hell, he hardly even spoke to Claudio anymore.

Balthazar saw the pain that was prominent on Pedro’s face for a while now, which was slowly ripping Balthazar’s heart to pieces. At first, Balthazar forced a shut down for his caring of Pedro because of what he did to Hero, and Hero definitely did _not_ deserve that. Watching Pedro, though, broke the shield that he had built. His love for Pedro had cut through and he knew that he needed to try and help Pedro in any way he could. It was that realization that he had come to that gave him the courage to walk up to Pedro, slinging his guitar behind him as he walked.

Pedro didn’t notice Balthazar right away; he was more focused on kicking up the grass around him. “Hey.” Balthazar said quietly.

Jumping, Pedro looked up, shock prominent on his face, “Balthazar.” He said, looking around at first as though to check that his old friend wasn’t talking to anyone else that may have been nearby.

“How’re you?” Balthazar asked, realizing that he didn’t exactly have the best idea of what he was going to say to Pedro now that he got his attention.

“I shouldn’t be the one that you are asking.” Pedro ran his hands through his hair – oh his perfect hair.

Balthazar looked back at Hero, who was talking to Claudio again. Beatrice was standing a little bit closer then she probably should, but for obvious reasons. Benedick was talking to the last couple of people who were still there – Meg, Ursula, and Verges (who was waiting for the bus).

“I already talked to Hero. She’s fine.” Balthazar said, which was a bit of an understatement, but he was trying to get Pedro to talk to him.

Pedro just shook his head, “You shouldn’t be talking to me, Balthazar. I’m a terrible person.”

Balthazar raised his eyebrows at Pedro, trying to think of the best way to get him to say anything other than that. It didn’t take much to realize that Beatrice – while making sure Claudio said nothing terrible to Hero again – was also keeping her eyes on Pedro. Balthazar could tell that that was making Pedro extremely uncomfortable.

“You want to come over to my house? I drove over here in my dad’s car. So we can leave right now if you want to.” Balthazar said, “It’ll give us a less public place to talk.”

“I don’t want to take you away from what’s going on. I’m not important-” Pedro started but Balthazar cut him off.

“We can go, it’s fine. I’m just going to tell Bea and Ben that I’m leaving. Come on.” Balthazar said, gesturing for Pedro to follow as he walked over to Bea and Ben.

Benedick said goodbye to Meg, Ursula, and Verges who were all heading out and looked over at Balthazar, “Are you going?”

Balthazar nodded, “I’m going to try and talk to Pedro.”

Benedick looked over to see Pedro trailing far behind, “I would suggest you have him talk to Hero right now, but-” Beatrice had ended up joining into the conversation that Claudio and Hero were having, “If he isn’t talking to you then having Bea there may be just a bit too much for him.”

“Agreed.” Balthazar nodded, “I’ll talk to you later.” He said as Pedro caught up. Pedro gave an awkward and highly apologetic look to Benedick. Balthazar gave Beatrice and Hero both hugs and said his goodbyes and glad that Hero was okay. Pedro said a lot of sorry’s as he was standing there, but he kept looking down at the ground.

 

The car ride to Balthazar’s house was a completely quiet one, Balthazar allowing Pedro to sulk for a little bit more before he tried to snap him out of it. It wasn’t until Pedro was sitting in Balthazar’s bedroom did he even begin to actually say anything.

Pedro had been poking around at his phone when he ended up in the messages, he saw the last form of actual communication that he and Balthazar had and immediately regretted pulling it up. It was Pedro in his arrogant mind, so high and proud of saving Claudio. The Pedro who was so confused why so many people took Hero’s side. It was the Pedro that thought he could do _anything_.

**Pedro:** You have to choose, Bathy. Whose side are you on? Mine and Claudio’s or Hero’s? You can’t be friends with everyone.

Pedro hated that he wrote that, but what stung more was Balthazar’s one word response. He remembered it coming not a second after he sent the message. He expected Balthazar to be on his side, they had been best friends after all since year nine! The response, however, was not what he expected.

**Balthazar:** Hero’s.

That killed Pedro. He remembered reading that message and having to set his phone down. At that moment, he realized that he had just lost his best friend. Of course, he still thought that he was right, but it was a big shock. Later, when the truth had come out… Pedro had felt even more like a dick. He wanted nothing more than to apologize to Balthazar, but he just couldn’t get himself to do it, because he didn’t think that Balthazar would ever want to talk to him again.

“Shit, Balthazar, I’m so sorry.” Pedro said, looking up at his friend, who was sitting at the edge of the bed.

Balthazar got a quick glance of what Pedro was looking at; he shook his head and gently took Pedro’s phone and put it face down on Balthazar’s bed. “Pedro, you need to take a breath. Yes, you did a lot of shit stuff, you and I both know that, but you need to listen to me. Now that you know what you know now, would you stop yourself from encouraging Claudio?”

Pedro stared at Balthazar for a second, “Of course I would. Why would I _want_ this to happen? I was stupid to do it in the first place!”

Nodding Balthazar gave Pedro a small smile, “Exactly, you know what you did was wrong. You wouldn’t do it again.” He looked around his room, trying to figure out the right words that he was trying to say, “You can’t go back in time and changed what happened. What you _can do_ is take this experience and learn from it.”

“Oh, I learned from this, alright. I learned that I’m a _complete dick_ who doesn’t deserve to have any friends at all.”

Balthazar shook his head, “No, that’s not it. Instead, think of it like this: you learned to stop and think through things before jumping on them. You learned to listen to other people’s sides”

Pedro ran his fingers though his hair again, “Fine… you have your point there, but-” He faltered for a second, “Why are you trying to help me, Balthazar?”

“You need someone with you. You aren’t the kind of person who is meant to be alone for long periods of time.” Balthazar said, this wasn’t something that he only just noticed, though, it was something that he had learned from the years of being friends with Pedro. “I could be that person without upsetting the balance of whatever else was happening around us.” In a small way, that was true, but not completely the truth as Balthazar wanted it to be. In fact, he would much rather just tell Pedro that it was because he was madly in love with him and hated seeing him so down, but now was just not the time. “After everything else you’ve been through and after everything you’ve done for me in the past, this was the best I could do.”

“I haven’t done that much for you.” Pedro muttered.

“You allowed yourself to become friends with me even though I was set as an outcast to the rest of the school. You’re my best friend.”

Pedro mumbled something about Balthazar also having Ursula, but still nodded. He knew that was a good enough answer for him right now anyway.

Balthazar moved from the bed and over to his desk where he pulled out a piece of paper with lyrics on it – a large majority of it was crossed out, but somewhere in it was the start of a song. “I’m working on something right now. Do you want to help?” He asked, showing the lyrics to Pedro. He liked it when Pedro helped him with songs and Pedro enjoyed helping him, especially when it got his mind off of things.


End file.
